"It is also asserted that the election settled the matters of the war and the torture of prisoners. These are dead issues that no longer need be addressed"
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A priest calling war and torture “dead issues” doesn’t sound like pastoral reassurance; it lands like an indictment dressed up as reportage. Greeley’s sentence is built around a slippery passive voice: “It is also asserted.” He’s not owning the claim so much as holding it up with tongs, letting readers smell what’s rotten without immediately naming the culprit. That distance matters. It mimics the way institutions talk when they want to launder responsibility into “consensus” and “closure.”
The intent is to expose a familiar civic dodge: the belief that an election functions as moral absolution. In this frame, democratic procedure becomes a kind of retroactive permission slip, not just for policy choices but for the ethical stains those choices produced. Greeley’s phrasing sharpens the critique by pairing “matters of the war” with “the torture of prisoners,” refusing the common rhetorical trick of treating torture as an unfortunate footnote to a broader conflict. He yokes them together as co-equal, unresolved debts.
“Dead issues” is the key barb. It suggests not that the questions have been answered, but that they’ve been buried. The subtext is theological as much as political: confession without penance is theater; forgiveness without truth is fraud. As a clergyman who spent decades watching institutions protect themselves by changing the subject, Greeley is warning that “moving on” is not neutrality - it’s a decision to protect power from accountability, and to make victims disappear a second time.
The intent is to expose a familiar civic dodge: the belief that an election functions as moral absolution. In this frame, democratic procedure becomes a kind of retroactive permission slip, not just for policy choices but for the ethical stains those choices produced. Greeley’s phrasing sharpens the critique by pairing “matters of the war” with “the torture of prisoners,” refusing the common rhetorical trick of treating torture as an unfortunate footnote to a broader conflict. He yokes them together as co-equal, unresolved debts.
“Dead issues” is the key barb. It suggests not that the questions have been answered, but that they’ve been buried. The subtext is theological as much as political: confession without penance is theater; forgiveness without truth is fraud. As a clergyman who spent decades watching institutions protect themselves by changing the subject, Greeley is warning that “moving on” is not neutrality - it’s a decision to protect power from accountability, and to make victims disappear a second time.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
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